The room was even blacker than the black hall. Almost at once my straining fingers touched a piece of cool wood. Gazing not forward into opaque blackness, but backward through transparent memory, I filled the room with a jagged pile of old desks. A narrow passageway appeared between the desks and wall. Deep in the blackness I heard the sound of moving furniture and began to make my way along the invisible corridor to my right. I could see nothing at all. I did not know what Edwin was doing. The desks shifted loudly, and in my brain a heavy desk-cover came softly sliding down. For a moment Rose Dorn crawled with bare knees over edges and screws. The desks shifted again, and quite suddenly things were out of control. A far desk crashed, and another, and another: it was an invisible landslide of desks, slipping and crashing down. “Edwin!” I cried. “Over here!” he shouted, startling me — for he called from the direction of the door behind me. In a roar of crashing desks I groped my way back to the door, and side by side with silent Edwin I hurried along the darkness and up the metal stairs. Side by side we pushed on the metal bar of the back door and stepped into the clear moonlight. Side by side we ran along the playground toward the distant bicycle, gleaming like a vast coin.
Only when the school was out of sight did we begin to speak. In excited whispers Edwin explained that he had tried to climb onto the desks, just for fun, but at the first sign of collapse he had circled along the corridor to the doorway behind me. He hoped nothing was broken. I too hoped nothing was broken. Now that we were safe we both felt a surge of pride in our moon-madness, and as we turned onto Benjamin Street we burst into loud, dangerous laughter.
Our final visit, on the penultimate night of Edwin’s life, was to White Beach. As we rattled over the wooden bridge, closed to midnight traffic by means of a moonlit chain hung between two posts, the smell of saltwater mingled with the sound of water slapping against piles. The narrow footpaths on both sides of the bridge were deserted, and on the solitary black pile that stood alone in the bright black water, no moonlit seagull posed. “Look!” I whispered, “no seagull.” “What seagull?” whispered Edwin. In the parking lot, deserted except for a single dark station wagon, I parked my bike sideways between two parallel white lines. Quickly we walked toward the miniature forest, and as we stepped out of the trees I sensed immediately that something had changed.
In the distance I saw a faint sparkle of black water. The merry-go-round building shone with a strange ghost-whiteness. The arcade looked somewhat larger than before, and I admired a handsome effect of shadow-stripes: cast by the posts at a sharp angle inward along the ground, they stood straight up against the bright façade. And yet the change I sensed had nothing to do with the artistic effects of moonlight and moonshade. “Do you notice anything?” I whispered, turning to elusive Edwin, who had already reached the merry-go-round and was standing on tiptoe at a little black window, peering intently through the blinders of his hands. “Look,” he whispered as I came up to him. Through the window I saw the frozen horses, their hooves still raised, their faces straining in patches of moon. “Actually,” I said, turning to Edwin, who again had left me and was halfway to the arcade. I hurried to catch up with him, and together we walked along the striped arcade toward a polygon of night. “Look!” said Edwin, skipping excitedly ahead; but not until I had stepped through the polygon and looked about in bewilderment did I suddenly realize what from the beginning I had perceived. The concrete basin of the motorboat pool, shaped like the state of Nevada, had disappeared. For a moment I wondered whether I had dreamed our ghostly visit there last summer. But as I strolled about on the moonlit ground, I came across a little patch of concrete, lightly covered with dirt; and as if my eye had suddenly been granted the power of penetrating the earth’s crust, I saw or felt the concrete outline of the motorboat pool, stretching away under its layer of moon-pale earth. In the dirt-filled basin I now detected a slight rise, as over a grave. Near the center someone had inserted a short tilted stick, which cast a shadow twenty times its length. “Let’s go,” I softly pleaded. But Edwin was having a grand old time, and we did not leave for at least another hour.
19
THE SUN HAD SET and the last light was draining from the sky as, with a splitting headache and a faint sore throat, swiftly I made my way across the darkening grass. I had not slept well the night before. In one hand I carried a small overnight bag containing a pair of red pajamas, a pair of maroon slippers, a black bathrobe, a green toothbrush, and an illustrated copy of Huckleberry Finn, wrapped in pink paper decorated with blue birthday cakes. This last was really for Mrs. Mullhouse, whose suspicions I thought might otherwise be aroused. Everything was going splendidly, splendidly. It had been easy enough for Edwin to arrange that I should sleep over that night, for tomorrow was a special occasion, and as a matter of fact everything was going splendidly, splendidly, except for the pressure of black dread crushing my heart, and that splitting headache. All the hot morning, all the hot afternoon, I had walked in a bright blaze of pain. More than once I had lain down in a vain effort to sleep, when shortly before dinner, falling into a fitful and exhausting nap, pursued by Edwin I raced through fields of strangling grass, over sliding hills of shells, through dark passageways lit by flickering torches, until coming at last to a red metal stairway with a yellow rail, swiftly I began to climb. At the top I pushed open a heavy trapdoor and stepped onto a sunny roof. Women in bright bathing suits and one-way silver eyeglasses sat about in gay lawn-chairs. Beside a white table I found a yellow rubber float. But when I sat down the sky darkened and a child began to cry, and far below I heard the sound of crashing waves. My float began to slide, faster and faster I rushed along, tumbling over the edge I gripped the sides as down and down I plunged, faster and faster the black waves rose to meet me, and I would have drowned for sure if I had not wakened with a splitting headache. The pale west, drained of blue, glowed with an unhealthy brightness, and as I climbed the back steps I saw through the screen-door the soothing lamplight from Edwin’s living room, on the dark side of the house. It was 8:32 by my watch when the door opened and Mrs. Mullhouse said “These damn flies hello Jeffrey,” and as I stepped inside I realized that Edwin had less than five hours to live.
In the kitchen I lifted a finger to my lips, unzipped my bag, and handed the pink and blue package to Mrs. Mullhouse. She immediately pressed it against her stomach and began to look about in terror, gripping the side of her face and breathing rapidly, as if I had handed her a stolen radio. Finally she dashed over to a high white cabinet and placed it between a large yellow bowl and a pile of white dishes. Then drawing the back of a hand across her forehead, shaking off imaginary drops, and rolling her eyes at the ceiling, she said in a loud voice: “I wonder where that bug-bomb went to.” She cupped her ear, as if waiting for an answer; gave a comic wink; and together we strolled into the living room.
He was lying on his stomach across from Karen, delicately tipping up an orange pick-up-stick from the colorful pile between them. Karen was leaning over, watching ferociously for the slightest motion in the pile. They had often played together since the completion of Edwin’s book, but now the sight of the two of them playing there, while Dr. Mullhouse sat in his chair with one leg flung over an arm and his old black moccasin dangling, filled me with sudden tenderness, and in the overwrought state of my nerves I might have shouted out who knows what dark secrets if Karen had not shrieked: “It moved!” “It did not!” cried Edwin, and Dr. Mullhouse, looking up abruptly, said: “Enough of that. Do you want to ruin my illusion of domestic bliss? Good evening, Jeffrey.” “It did not,” whispered Edwin. “It did too,” whispered Karen. Loudly I said: “Can I play?” and joined them on the rug, a smiling bringer of peace with a splitting headache.